


Close Encounters

by telm_393



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Friendship, Gen, Menstruation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 15:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6290257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe fixes everything, but it's not pretty.</p><p>(The follow-up to "Blood Loss".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Encounters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brilligspoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brilligspoons/gifts).



> Living on a desert planning does not give you life skills, it gives you survival skills. Unfortunately, those aren't always the same thing. Poe tries his best, bless him.

[](http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/nia939/media/close%20encounters%20purimgifts%20real_zpshaqmlt4u.jpg.html)

Rey and Finn walk purposefully down the hall to Poe’s room, Rey desperately hoping that the blood crawling its way down her leg isn’t noticeable. This is awful. Rey would much rather bleed from her head or something. At least she’s done that before. 

Finn, looking like a man on a mission, gives her a bright, reassuring smile that doesn’t hide the panic in his eyes, and knocks heavily on the door to Poe’s quarters. There’s some kind of alarm set up that makes it unnecessary to knock on the doors, which has been explained to Rey and Finn multiple times, but they still can’t figure out where the “bell” is, and Rey knows Finn hasn’t managed to dredge up the courage to ask, and she certainly hasn’t, so they knock. 

“Please be here…” Finn says under his breath, bouncing on his heels.

Rey would probably be pacing, were she not bleeding. Instead she stands stiffly. 

Poe opens the door wearing sleep clothes and looking disheveled and exhausted. It occurs to Rey that it’s very late, and Poe came back from a mission three days ago and is still looking tired around the edges of his smile even when he hasn’t just been rudely awakened from sleep.

Finn seems to have had the same thought, because his face goes apologetic. “Sorry for waking you, but Rey’s—”

Rey shoves Finn to get him to shut up, because this isn’t something that can be said in the hallway.

Poe looks concerned now, standing taller and not looking like he wants to yawn anymore. “What’s wrong?”

“Can we come in?” Rey whispers, entirely conscious of how humiliating this whole business is, since she’s not just sick, but sick in a stupid way where she can’t even walk without discomfort and her stomach is still cramping, but she’s so used to hunger pangs it’s almost a welcome distraction from the real issue. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Poe says, also hushed, ushering them in.

Rey and Finn stand in the middle of his room, and Finn wrings his hands. 

Rey says, “I…” and then stops. She’s not sure what to say. She explained to Finn, sure, but Finn has a very good read on the soundless explanations her body makes, just like she has a good read on his. It’s not something Rey has with anyone else, but that’s not so surprising, because it’s Finn, and he’s special. 

Poe is starting to look very worried. “Can you talk?” he asks. “Is your throat sore?”

“Rey’s bleeding from her vagina,” Finn blurts out, and Rey groans and buries her face in her hands in embarrassment and grudging gratitude, because at least she doesn’t have to say it. 

“What?” Poe asks. “Wait. Oh.”

Rey feels hope bloom in her heart as her head snaps up so she can look at Poe, because that oh sounds like one of recognition.

Poe looks less worried, now, as he shifts awkwardly from foot to foot and heaves out a sigh, rubbing a hand over his face. “I didn’t prepare for this,” he mutters to himself, but then he takes a deep breath and says, “Rey, sit down, I have a perfectly reasonable explanation.” Poe waits for Rey to sit down, and then looks at Finn. “Is it alright with you if he stays?”

Finn looks taken aback and vaguely hurt, and Rey asks, tightly, “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Poe’s face twists into a kind of expression that means he doesn’t want to talk about this but is going to talk about it anyway. “Well. Rey, when…there’s…women, human women…there’s…” he clears his throat and says, “Human women menstruate.”

Rey looks at Poe in a way that she hopes communicates exactly how unhelpful he’s being right now.

It seems to, because he says, “Don’t look at me like that, I’m saying…human women, when they’re fertile, they…bleed.”

“What?” Rey asks just as Finn blurts out the same question.

Poe twists his face into an uncomfortable expression and says, “You have a uterus.”

“Alright,” Rey says.

“You know, where you…where women carry babies. Before they’re born.”

Rey nods impatiently. She’d known women didn’t just carry babies in their stomachs or something, she wasn’t a child, even if she didn’t know the word.

“Well, when you’re not…with child, you bleed from your…” Poe clears his throat awkwardly, and Rey wonders if every human except Finn has some kind of mental block against saying ‘vagina’. “…because your, um, the lining of your uterus is being…shed? Something like that. It’s a thing that women start getting after puberty, I mean, after they become…no, you were already a woman…after they…reach sexual maturity.”

Rey’s not sure how much of that disjointed rambling she caught, even though she was listening intently, but she’s got a basic understanding at this point, she thinks. She asks, to clarify that the relief she’s feeling is founded in fact, “So this is something that happens? To women?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, human people with uteruses, at least, and lots of them are women and…yes. It is. Usually. Actually, usually women start menstruating earlier than you do, when they’re still kids.”

“Does that mean there’s something wrong with me? I didn’t reach…sexual maturity on time?”

“No, not at all, I actually think I know the answer to this one. You weren’t eating much on Jakku, so your body kept you from menstruating because it didn’t want you to lose blood like that, and since you couldn’t really carry a baby with your diet anyway, it just set that whole thing aside. So now you’re getting food, you’ve started menstruating.”

“So, I’m not sick?”

“No, don’t worry. This is normal. And there are…there are sanitary pads I can get you so that you can soak up the blood without getting it everywhere.”

Rey sighs heavily with relief and looks over at Finn, who gives her a big happy grin, clearly pleased that she’s not dying.

Poe looks like he’s been to battle, but he gives Rey a reassuring smile and says, “We’re all clear.”

Rey nods in understanding.


End file.
